Scientists Conclude Dire Climate Change Models Were Wrong, Now What?
Scientists Conclude Dire Climate Change Models Were Wrong, Now What?
Authored by Mike Shedlock
via MishTalk.com February 6, 2022
Scientists
admit they did not model clouds accurately and that they need a supercomputer
1000 times more powerful to accurately do that...
Climate Change Modeling Meets Limits of Science
The Wall Street Journal reports Climate Scientists
Encounter Limits of Computer Models, Bedeviling Policy.
That is a
non-paywalled, free-to-read link courtesy of the WSJ.
It's lengthy but an excellent read. I encourage everyone to take
a look.
The dire predictions went out the window, seemingly unanimously.
But there is plenty in the article for the fearmongers and the sceptics to both
say "I told you so".
Italic emphasis in the snips
below is mine.
Introduction
For almost five years, an international consortium of scientists
was chasing clouds, determined to solve a problem that bedeviled climate-change
forecasts for a generation: How do these wisps of water vapor affect global
warming?
They reworked 2.1 million lines of supercomputer code used to
explore the future of climate change, adding more-intricate equations for
clouds and hundreds of other improvements. They tested the equations, debugged
them and tested again.
The
scientists would find that even the best tools at hand can’t model climates
with the sureness the world needs as rising temperatures impact almost every
region.
Dire
Forecasts Wrong
When they ran the updated simulation in 2018, the conclusion
jolted them: Earth’s atmosphere was much more sensitive to greenhouse gases
than decades of previous models had predicted, and future temperatures could be
much higher than feared—perhaps even beyond hope of practical remedy.
“We thought this was really strange,” said Gokhan Danabasoglu,
chief scientist for the climate-model project at the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder
at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR. “If that number was
correct, that was really bad news.”
The scientists soon concluded their new calculations had been
thrown off kilter by the physics of clouds in a warming world, which may
amplify or damp climate change. “The old way is just wrong, we know that,” said
Andrew Gettelman, a physicist at NCAR who specializes in clouds and helped
develop the CESM2 model. “I think our higher sensitivity is wrong too. It’s probably
a consequence of other things we did by making clouds better and more
realistic. You solve one problem and create another.”
UN Plays
Down Extreme Forecasts
“We have a situation where the models are behaving strangely,”
said Gavin Schmidt, director of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, a leading center for
climate modeling. “We have a conundrum.”
In November 2021, as leaders met in Glasgow to
negotiate limits on greenhouse gases under the auspices of the
2015 Paris Accords, there were more than 100 major global climate-change models
produced by 49 different research groups, reflecting an influx of people into
the field.
In its
guidance to governments last year, the U.N. climate-change panel for the first
time played down the most extreme forecasts.
Hind
Casting
Before making new climate predictions for policy makers, an
independent group of scientists used a technique called “hind-casting,” testing
how well the models reproduced changes that occurred during the 20th century
and earlier. Only models that re-created past climate behavior accurately were
deemed acceptable.
Computing
Clouds
Because clouds can both reflect solar radiation into space and
trap heat from Earth’s surface, they are among the biggest challenges for
scientists honing climate models.
At any given time, clouds cover more than two-thirds of the
planet. Their impact on climate depends on how reflective they are, how high
they rise and whether it is day or night. They can accelerate warming or cool
it down. They operate at a scale as broad as the ocean, as small as a hair’s
width. Their behavior can be affected, studies show, by factors ranging from
cosmic rays to ocean microbes, which emit sulfur particles that become the
nuclei of water droplets or ice crystals.
“If you
don’t get clouds right, everything is out of whack.” said
Tapio Schneider, an atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of
Technology and the Climate Modeling Alliance, which is developing an
experimental model. “Clouds are crucially important for regulating Earth’s
energy balance.”
In an
independent assessment of 39 global-climate models last year, scientists found
that 13 of the new models produced significantly higher estimates of the global
temperatures caused by rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide than the
older computer models—scientists called them the “wolf pack.” Weighed
against historical evidence of temperature changes, those estimates were deemed
unrealistic.
Dr. Gettelman, who helped develop CESM2, and his colleagues in
their initial upgrade added better ways to model polar ice caps and how carbon
and nitrogen cycle through the environment. To make the ocean more realistic,
they added wind-driven waves. They fine-tuned the physics in its algorithms and
made its vintage
Fortran code more efficient.
Even the simplest diagnostic test is challenging. The model
divides Earth into a virtual grid of 64,800 cubes, each 100 kilometers on a
side, stacked in 72 layers. For each projection, the computer must calculate
4.6 million data points every 30 minutes. To test an upgrade or correction,
researchers typically let the model run for 300 years of simulated computer
time.
In their initial analysis, scientists discovered a flaw in how
CESM2 modeled the way moisture interacts with soot, dust or sea-spray particles
that allow water vapor to condense into cloud droplets. It
took a team of 10 climate experts almost 5 months to track it down to a flaw in
their data and correct it, the scientists said.
Strained
Supercomputers
The NCAR scientists in Boulder would like to delve more deeply
into the behavior of clouds, ice sheets and aerosols, but they already are
straining their five-year-old Cheyenne supercomputer, according to NCAR
officials. A climate model able to capture the subtle effects of
individual cloud systems, storms, regional wildfires and ocean currents at a
more detailed scale would require a thousand times more computer power,
they said.
Climate
models need to link rising temperatures on a global scale to changing
conditions in a local forest, watershed, grassland or agricultural zone, says
NCAR forest ecologist Jacquelyn Shuman and NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl.
“Computer models that contain both large-scale and small-scale
models allow you to really do experiments that you can’t do in the real world,”
she said. “You can really ramp up the temperature, dial down the precipitation
or completely change the amount of fire or lightning strikes that an area is
seeing, so you can really diagnose how it all works together. That’s the next
step. It would be very computationally expensive.”
“I think the climate models are the best tool we have to
understand the future, even though they are far from perfect,” said Dr.
Gettelman. “I’m not worried that the new models might be wrong. What
scares me is that they might be right.”
Models Will Get Better
Scientists need to keep doing what they are doing. The models
surely will get better.
Despite the models being wrong, they appear to be better than I
expected.
Yet, had we listened to the dire forecasts from Al Gore,
globetrotting Gretta, President Biden, and media darling AOC, where would we
be?
Al Gore wanted to spend $90 trillion to fight climate
change.
AOC
"New Green Deal" Stunningly Absurd: Far More Ridiculous Than Expected
Recall my February 7, 2019 post AOC "New Green
Deal" Stunningly Absurd: Far More Ridiculous Than Expected
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) released her bill for a
"Green New Deal". It's stunningly absurd.
AOC's
Green New Deal Pricetag of $51 to $93 Trillion
On February 25, 2019 I noted I compared AOC's Green New Deal
Pricetag of $51 to $93 Trillion vs. Cost of Doing Nothing
William Nordhaus, a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in
economics, compared AOC's Green New Deal with the cost of doing nothing and
various alternatives.
Nordhaus’s model—at least as of its 2007
calibration—estimated that such a policy goal would make humanity $14 trillion
poorer compared to doing nothing at all about climate change.
2007 is admittedly way out of date, yet the models then were on
the dire side.
AOC Says
World Will End in 12 Years
On January 22, 2019 I noted Ocasio-Cortez Says
World Will End in 12 Years: Here's What to Do About It
AOC now says her comment was out of context, but play the video and you will
see that her comments clearly weren't.
Perhaps it was hyperbole, but extreme fearmongering of this kind
will do nothing but raise eyebrows.
Clean
Energy Now Demands
We have had an endless parade of fearmongers including Al Gore,
Gretta,, AOC, Senator Elizabeth Warren, President Biden, the UN, and countless
others demanding "clean energy now".
None of them have factored in the amount of copper, lithium,
rare earth materials, etc., needed for their demands.
Their demands also depend on unreliable wind and battery storage
techniques that do not even exist yet.
Solar energy is surprising cheap provided there is enough cheap
land, there are no clouds, there is no nighttime, and the energy needs are in
the desert, not New York City.
Alternatively, solar needs storage technology that does not yet
exist, but even if it did, we still have issues regarding need for more
lithium, rare earth metals, etc., for the storage.
We will get there over time, but that time is not now.
Fearmongering does not help.
Per Capita CO2 Emissions
The US, EU, and UK have made huge strides in emissions. China, India, and many emerging markets are headed in the opposite direction.
The political reality of the matter is that actions by the US
and EU will not do much unless China and India do much more, much faster.
Global
Net Zero Climate Change Targets are 'Pie in the Sky'
Please recall my April 5, 2021 , post Global Net Zero
Climate Change Targets are 'Pie in the Sky'.
India lambasted the richer world's carbon cutting plans, calling
long term net zero targets, "pie in the sky."
In a pre-summit climate change meeting of 197 countries, China
did not show up. India blasted the targets as "Pie in the Sky".
"2060 sounds good, but it is just that, it sounds
good," Raj Kumar Singh, India's minister for power, told a meeting
organized by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Government
Action
Scientists discarded 13 of 39 models, those with the most dire
predictions and those that could not explain the ice age. Guess which ones
the media, the politicians, and the fearmongers most quoted.
Now the scientists struggle with clouds.
One of my readers repeatedly challenges me to a debate on
climate change.
I am sure he understands the models way better than I do. But
those models were wrong on the dire side. Yet, I admit the models seem better
than I expected.
However, my main objection to all of this has been vindicated.
Anyone
expecting government fearmongers to do anything sensible about climate change
were, and still are wrong.
Science is advancing rapidly. Clean energy, especially solar,
will make a dent. But along the way, we dropped nuclear from the equation to
appease the Greens.
Dropping nuclear energy was a huge mistake, especially in Europe
where Germany is now using more coal and is increasingly dependent on Russia
for natural gas.
That is the irony of Green demands. The Greens perpetually
demand more from science than science permits, at prices the Greens don't even
bother to calculate.
Finally, the Greens ignore the huge political reality regarding
China and India. India is talking 2060 and China 2050 on net zero.
There is no way to force countries to go along with US and EU
mandates. The cost of attempting to do so via tariffs would be massive,
undoubtedly resulting in a global recession, if not depression.
"I've
looked at clouds from both sides now
"From
up and down and still somehow
"It's
cloud's illusions I recall
"I
really don't know clouds at all"
https://mishtalk.com/economics/scientists-conclude-dire-climate-change-models-were-wrong-now-what
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